


Berserker On Thin Ice

by BloodMooninSpace



Series: Berserker'verse [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Bigotry & Prejudice, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dissociation, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Multishipping, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, reader discretion advised
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-25 12:10:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9819992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodMooninSpace/pseuds/BloodMooninSpace
Summary: The Atlantis Expedition is launching for a great adventure, towing along berserker John Shepperd. They find the city, but the other side of the gate is fraught with danger. With a galaxy to explore, allies to be made and enemies to face it's going to be an adventure that challenges each and every person who stepped through the gate from earth to fight harder, be more creative, and examine their very conceptuality of what it means to be human.***This story can be read as a standalone.





	1. Berserker

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my betas Vexbatch, Lachrymosade, Ara, and Bubbles

John Sheppard could tell that Colonel Marshall Sumner didn’t want him in his command. That was clear even before John knew why they were sending him on the mission. The Atlantis mission was scheduled to leave tomorrow, and Col. Sumner called John into his office, summoned him. Sumner was sitting behind his desk in the small office, barely large enough space to stand at attention, and no room made for a chair. His daemon, a large German Shepherd, was sitting beside the desk. Clearly the man didn’t hold his longer meetings in here. Sumner’s scent pile was laced with fear the moment the door latched behind John, but Sumner had let himself be closed in a confined space with a berserker, which was more than John could say for a number of his previous commanding officers.

John, like all berserkers, was a husk; his daemon had left him. Husks, without a daemon, without that physical expression of the soul -- it was a bitter aspect of his new reality that he was no longer viewed as human. Berserkers were the property of the government, of the military. Eyes that could spot a sniper at two miles, more articulate than a standard drug dog when smelling for contraband. An adrenal response that could make the difference of life-saving seconds in the most dire of circumstances.

Sumner regarded him coldly and he didn't have to spell it out. John had heard it all before; he manifested too old, was in the wrong branch of the military - an undisciplined Air Force scut, not a proper Marine. An untested, barely trained liability.

“Your handler for this mission is a civilian, Doctor Kate Heightmeyer. You are to keep in regular contact with her about your levels. Imprint on her, so in the event of a zone-out, she can pull you out,” Sumner barked at him, his voice grating in the echoing angles of the subterranean office.

“Yes, sir.” John ground the words out as his sight spiked, the fluorescent lights flickering rapidly, too much stimulus and too bright, a migraine unspooling behind his eyes. John fought hard to hold at ease as spots began to swim in his vision.

“She has an office on level 22. Imprint on her at her earliest convenience.”

“Yes, sir.” His clothes were itching, and he wanted them off before they hurt --

“Dismissed!”

John turned smartly, and with exacting care left Sumners’ office, striding purposefully down the hall. Some commanding officers never got it, never understood that there was a difference between demonstrating that you trusted a berserker in your command not to kill you, and demonstrating that you knew how to handle them well. John reached berserker quarters without incident. Shucking his clothes, he let them fall haphazardly across his bunk before he made his way to the communal shower. The Asset Barracks were a pair of bunk rooms bracketing shared showers and bathrooms. No privacy, isolated from the rest of the base, and under guard.

John got the water running and screeched when it felt first too cold ( _ice, ice, and knives of bitter cold)_ , then too hot ( _waves of heat to melt his bones)_ , and then too cold again ( _fragile brittle cold, shatteringly cold)_ as the pipes flushed their standing supply, and water off the main lines gushed through. John felt the prickling bite of a severe skin reaction blossoming over his shoulders, and he would have to go to the infirmary soon, but later, later. Now the water was flowing at a regular temperature, and he let himself get lost in it, float into oblivion on the consistent even temperature and pressure of the water.

 

* * *

 

When John came to, the water was still running, and he was leaning against the wall, with the shower spray arcing over his head to land on his neck and shoulders and run down his body to the drain.

 

* * *

 

Ronald Greer could hear the sound of water running in the barracks showers from halfway down the hall. When he swiped his security card to enter the first bunkroom, there were clothes laid out on the bunk assigned to the new Air Force transfer. The door to the communal showers was hanging open, water vapor softly pooling through the crack to dissipate beyond the threshold.The door was slick with condensation as Ron pulled it open, the ridges and whorls of his fingertips briefly filling with water and hydroplaning, slipping over the door until he adjusted his grip. Ron looked back over his shoulder, sharpening his sight so he could read the name on the berserker’s gear. Ron walked into the bathroom slowly, warily.

“Shepherd? Shepherd are you al--” Ron froze when he saw Shepherd, curled fetally under the spray, his eyes wide and vacant, his skin wrinkled and waterlogged, his hair plastered to his scalp. “Shepherd. Hey, Shep.”

 

* * *

 

“Shepherd. Hey, Shep.” The voice was the first thing John registered as his hearing reengaged. 

His muscles were sore, and as he moved, they locked numbly, his knees buckling under him. John knelt in the shower for a minute as he got his bearings again, still feeling a little uneasy in his skin after his zone-out. A body moved into his line of sight, and the water cut out. With a shaking hand, John reached up as the other Berserker reached down. John’s hand felt weak as he gripped the other Berserker’ forearm and balanced himself as he unsteadily regained his feet. John reached for a towel, but the texture scraped against his palm, sandpaper rough. Someone turned off the lights with a click, but John could still see as clearly in the sparse light leaking under the door as a human could in broad daylight.

“You need to report to the Infirmary. A zone-out this bad, they’ll want to keep you under observation at least overnight.” Greer. This, his name was Ronald Greer. Family history of the service, family bloodline of Berserkers. Man had an easy smile and a sharp eye. Greer had been swept up in the same blood testing dragnet for the magic gene that had landed John in this place and John had learned more from Greer in his three weeks on base than anyone else had bothered to teach him since Afgh--

John yanked his thoughts back to the present, to the oscillating fluorescent lights overhead, to the buzz of the powerlines in the walls, to the gurgling of the pipes echoing around his skull as John struggled to pull himself together. A pair of soft cotton sweats and an easy pull-over medical shirt were tossed towards his chest and John grabbed at them, roughly separating the two garments. The air felt too hot, and the debilitating dry heat of the Afghanistan desert scraped through his memory, and he felt himself sliding toward another zone-out, the static and dissociation of the zone so tempting with the memory of sharp popping automatic gunfire echoing in his ears. The shirt dragged over his ears and neck, the sliding of the fabric unbearably loud, the fabric intolerably textured, all of the stimulation sending crawling sensations down his nerves. Tugging the pants on and not bothering with shoes, John grabbed his keycard and stumbled to the door.

“I’ll walk you,” Anthony Markham said. He was the other Marine berserker slated for the expedition. Markham and Greer were supposed to be the two-man team, but Sumner didn’t want John replacing one of his trusted assets. Lightswitch duty. He was on lightswitch, wouldn’t shoot back -- John felt the world get a little fuzzy around him. Markham was a solid presence next to him, a steady heartbeat and an even gait. The halls were empty until they reached the elevator. _Focus, John. Non-aggressive posture, eyes down_ \-- The walk was a blur; the world falling into stark relief when they reached the infirmary.

 

* * *

 

When Anthony Markham stumbled over the threshold of the infirmary, Doctor Carolyn Lam jerked to her feet, causing a flash of color to fall from her shoulder as the movement displaced her daemon. Markham staggered under Shepherd's weight as the other man cycled in and out of the fringes of another zone-out.

“Hey Doc, Shepherd's not doing so hot,” Markham grunted out between labored breaths. “Found him zoned in the shower when Greer and I returned from sparring. No idea how long he’s been like this.”

“Get him on the bed,” Dr. Lam said as she crossed the room. 

Markham complied, situating Shepherd amidst the five-point restraints. Dr. Lam quickly ran through the sensory check, concern pursing her brow as she recorded his results.

“Shepherd, do you need a sedative?” she asked.

“Please.” The man's broken sob came as a bitter shock -- to hear another Asset plead for the loopy lax misery of sedation was profoundly unsettling. It was a brutal reminder of another time, of shaking after hours of searching through rubble and debris.

Markham rubbed his wrist as Dr. Lam buckled Shepperd into the restraints, wrist, ankle, waist, his skin prickling with the memory of being helpless in medical.

“Dismissed, Markham.”

Markham stepped back, slowly turning away, hesitant to leave John behind. Dr. Lam prepped the IV and the tang of blood burst across Markham's tongue as dragged his air in through his mouth, the coppery taste bright for an instant. Despite his best efforts, Markham didn't get far enough down the hall to miss the ragged and relieved exhale when the sedation went to work in Sheppard’s system.

* * *

 

Memories of being sedated clawed at Markham as he made his way back to the barracks. Greer was playing a hand of solitaire when he got there. Markham sat heavily on his bunk, suddenly bone tired.

“He asked for sedation. He asked for it, and I didn’t want to leave him.” Markham's voice was a hoarse whisper in his own ears. 

Greer didn't look up from his cards. “He was in a bad way when we got to him, Tony.”

“I know, I’m just --” Markham cut himself off, exhaled, and started anew. “Brings up some bad memories."

Markham unlaced his boots and stripped his socks, crawling under his blanket and flattening his back to the cool cement of the wall. He fell off to sleep quickly enough, but there were echoes of dust on his skin and the sickening crunching of rubble and the low wet coughs of dust clogged lungs playing fresh and bright as Greer shook him awake.

“Thanks,” Markham said softly, and headed into the bathroom for a cool drink of water. It took a few minutes for the temperature to be desirably cool from the tap.

Getting back to sleep took more time than he liked to admit.

 

* * *

 

John woke slowly, tensing as he recognized the heavy thickness in his limbs. He could feel the drug fading, and he wished it wouldn’t. Sedation quieted the crawling panic at the back of his mind, the place where some base instinct screamed at him to fight his way free, to use every detail of his surroundings to get himself out. But the padded cuffs that hold his ankles, wrists, his waist, his throat to the bed?

Those were not his to remove. Not since Afghanistan. Not since he woke up hearing things, seeing details, smelling things so faint, his skin more sensitive, and able to taste the very air. Not since they labeled him a berserker: capable of anything except making any decisions about his own life.

“John?” Her voice was soft, but John couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes yet, couldn’t bring himself to put a face to the voice.

“John, I know you are awake. I’m Doctor Kate Heightmeyer, and I know this is a stressful situation, but we are leaving at ten-hundred hours. I need you to get a baseline to ground your senses.”

John opened his eyes and turned to the source of the voice. She was pretty, a strawberry-blonde with sharp eyes and a soft smile, a parrot daemon on her shoulder. John fought down the pang of grief that echoed at the reminder of what he had lost; the cavernous emptiness that used to be filled with the golden and black patterned fur of his ocelot daemon, Nyra. He missed her curiosity, and the ripple of her patterned pelt as she investigated every room he had been in until she --

“John.” Her voice cut him out of his wandering thoughts. Sedation lingered, the insidious tendrils of loopiness messing with his attention.

“John.” Her voice was warm, and as he turned to her, for a moment he was lost in her soft grey-green eyes. Her makeup was softly applied, and she was so fair in complexion that she looked ghostly pale in the dreary blue tint of the artificial lights in the Infirmary.

“Kate,” John said, testing her name. “I’m ready.” John shifted, flexing against the leather band around his neck. “How do you want to do this?”

Kate stood and reached toward his throat. John tensed, forcing himself to stay still and keep from flinching away from her hands as she worked the buckle and opened the neck restraint. Kate sat on the edge of the hospital bed, by his hip, putting herself within reach. An easy trust that did not go unnoticed as she reached forward and unbuckled the waist restraint, letting the straps fall to his sides.

“Would you sit up?” she asked. 

John flexed his abs, forcing his body to cooperate. As he sat up, he caught the smell of her green apple shampoo, a lilac perfume drifting up from her wrists. It was a cloying blend of scents; overwhelming and hard to set aside and balance his senses.

There were dark undertones in her hair, it was sun brightened, with the deepened tonalities of natural haircolor. Her eyes had a dark rim to them of an almost charcoal gray.

John focused, heard the even draw of her breath, the steady beating of her heart, and let the blend sink into his mind, a melody of impressions that formed Kate to his senses.

“Now, I’ll take you back to the dorm for the rest of the night.”

Her nimble fingers quickly took care of his wrist restraints, and then she stood again, walked to the end of the bed and unbuckled his ankle restraints too.

“Come along.”

John twisted, letting his feet drop to the floor. He stood slowly, following her through the echoing cement halls.

When they reached the door for the dorm, Kate paused, turned to him and smiled brightly.

“Sleep well, John. Wake up call for the assets is in four hours, at 0600.” She swiped the security card through the card reader and opened the door. “Good night.”

John walked past her, and fought the shiver of powerlessness that came when the security lock engaged behind him. He made his way across to his bunk in the near darkness, yanking back the blanket and dropping on the mattress.

“Welcome back.” The voice cut through the background hum of the HVAC and the low crackling of the wiring.

“Yeah,” John said into his pillow, but he knew he would be heard. He could pick up Greer’s steady heartbeat and Markham's uneven breaths.

Greer chuckled bitterly, the sound a comfort in the hostile night. “Markham is having a rough night of it. I stopped waking him up when he slipped into his third nightmare.”

John rolled over and looked across the dim room. “You nervous?”

Greer laughed again, dry and biting. “Who wouldn’t be? But it is also pretty damn exciting. Getting to see some strange new worlds? This is the chance of a lifetime. Not the ticket I would have taken to get there, but not a trip I want out of, you know?”

“Yeah, getting to lurk in the labs sounds like a lot of fun. I might even get to use my math degree again.”

Greer softly huffed in disbelief. “Oh, you poor bastard. I was raised into this, but it must have been something, your life turning around like that. Math, huh? I would never have guessed.”

“Yeah.”

John closed his eyes, letting his favorite numbers play out behind his mind’s eye; the mathematics of flight and lift. 

“Still gonna be amazing.” Greer’s voice was fond and wistful as John drifted into a thin, listless sleep.


	2. Everything is Under Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo. Tl;dr, life hit the fan and hit the fan hard. Have another chapter? *buries face in my hands*

Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The control room was small compared to the four-story room it overlooked, but it was a main thoroughfare for most of the personnel involved in running Stargate Command.

Airmen walked past with daemons perched on their shoulders, keeping pace at a hip or knee, curled around a limb, or flying in their wake. It was painfully obvious to anyone who bothered to look that McKay was Alone, a husk without the visible manifestation of his soul, a man without a daemon.  

McKay closed his eyes, paced his breathing, and focused for a meditative seven count in, hold for four, seven count out, hold for -- He saw her for a heartbeat. An otter, HIS otter, energetic as she dashed back and forth and then dove into a pool of gold-tinged light. Gone. Again. He opened his eyes again as he heard Colonel Samantha Carter speaking over the video link.

“All of our diagnostics check out. If you are ready on your end, I’ll plug it in.”

McKay quickly scanned over his readouts one last time before responding, “Yes, yes, we are good to go.”

The camera was at a good angle, he could see the important parts of the electrical control wall that would provide the massive power needed to create a wormhole to another galaxy. The power source was a Zero Point Module, left over from the time of the Alterans (called by some, the Ancients). The ZPM slid into its custom formed cradle, and lit up brilliantly. He quashed his zing of victory, clamping down on his mental shields. _Keep a lid on it McKay, wouldn’t want to freak out the mundanes. The general public takes very poorly to an empath broadcasting, so keep it to yourself._

But he allowed himself a small satisfied smirk as Ketyl, Sgt. Siler’s fox daemon, yipped excitedly.

 

* * *

 

John fought to keep his breathing shallow and even. The room was crowded, so very crowded, and it reeked. A cacophony of several dozen different colognes and perfumes over the scents of gun oil, adrenaline, apprehension, nervousness, fear, and excitement assailed his senses. The crates smelled of a thousand things, and with the echoing of several hundred people's footsteps along the hall, he clung to consciousness as best he could. He could feel it, the numbness of a zone-out, the peace of escape, riding on the edge of his consciousness. If he just let go, he could get lost in the endless even expanse of the grey walls. They were a placid, industrial --

John took a thin, measured breath through his nose, trying to block out the taste of the thronging press of humanity on the air. Tried to shove aside the warring scents that bordered on overwhelming.

The gateroom was a mess of civilians and rowdy daemons. It was a little dizzying, after years of conscripted service, to be in a room with so few soldiers. Berserkers like him weren’t allowed off the leash because legally they were a danger both to themselves and the general public.  

John took another steadying breath as Doctor Elizabeth Weir walked front and center on the ramp and gave a rather rousing speech.

“ … I'd like to offer you all one last chance to withdraw your participation.”

Withdraw his participation? That offer had never applied to him. They gave him the illusion of the choice, but he had been Atlantis-bound from the moment some suit got the idea in their head to blood panel all the berserkers, looking for some magic gene they were calling the “Alteran Technology Activator.” Dr. Weir had learned he had the ATA, and he was on the mission. Plain as that. Dogs of war don’t get to pick their kennels.

 

* * *

 

From the observation room, Dr. McKay let himself bask in the excitement of the expedition and the personnel of the SGC. With a shallow, even breath, he slowly lowered his shields. It was so much work to keep himself shielded from everyone constantly, it was a welcome relief to let himself feel such unadulterated -- no. There was someone down there --

McKay yanked his shields roughly back in place. Someone down there was miserable. They were a black hole of bleakness, but he was here to find a lost city, not a lost soul. Whomever they were, they weren’t his problem.

 

* * *

 

The din of the room faded as John’s hearing focused on the rumbling, canine growl of disapproval, in close proximity to the familiar steady beat of Col. Sumner’s heart.

John had learned early on how perilous it was to be unaware of the presence of your commanding officer. Learning the colonel’s heartbeat had been reflexive, so John knew who it was crowding his shoulder, whose daemon was growling beside him - even as Sumner stood casually out of his line of sight.

Ice rolled down John’s spine as he imagined being stranded in the far reaches of _another galaxy_ with Sumner as his CO. Dr. Weir at least looked him in the eye and pretended he was a person. The metal of his ID necklace was suddenly feeling too tight against the base of his throat, and John fought to keep his breathing level and even. The orange crystals around the edge of the gate were lighting up, and as the eighth one lit atop the ring, the sergeant on the observation deck announced, “chevron eight locked.” The eerie caw of the sergeant’s raven daemon echoed his voice as the whole room seemed to take a collective breath.

Then the ring - the gate - was flooded blue and brilliantly exploding into the room, and John felt a cool peace slinging over him. It pooled in a brilliant puddle of blue and white light, and was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen. His next breath was cooler, clearer, more pure than any lungful he had ever dragged out of this wretched mountain. For one bittersweet moment, John allowed himself to hope.

 

* * *

 

McKay let himself taste his wave of satisfaction before suppressing it, so that not a single feeling projected.

“Seriously, Doctor, calm down. You’re embarrassing me,” Dr. Weir said lightly, like she meant it as a joke. Had she forgotten the distrust the general public had for empaths, the way that his kind were trusted only so far? People act like they _never_ could tell if one of those scheming empaths were changing the way they felt. Bad enough to have been a brilliant child, or an empath. He was cursed enough to have been both.

McKay swallowed hard, and aimed for a light note when he responded, “I’ve never been so excited in my life.” He missed it by at least a kilometer. Not his fault, there was someone here who wasn’t just sad, they were cavernously depressed, distraught. He had gotten empathic reads off people who actively suicidal who didn’t feel this bleak and hopeless. Whomever they were, they were keeping it mostly hidden, but there were flashes of overwhelming emotion that betrayed them.

 

* * *

 

Dr. McKay’s hands roved over his keyboard, wresting control of the MALP away from Sgt. Harriman’s terminal. Harriman was doing a pretty good job keeping his exasperation to himself, for a mundane, but this was McKay’s mission, and he was going to verify the data for himself before throwing himself through a wormhole to another galaxy. While there was a risk that they would be taking a one-way trip, they had not been sent on a suicide mission. McKay let his hands drift over the controls, cycling screens quickly. He wasn’t going to miss anything.

“Environmental sensors say there’s oxygen, no measureable toxins. Huh,” he muttered, somewhat astonished. “We have viable life support. Honestly not what I was expecting.” He scooped up his personal computer and the pack that was on the ground under the console. With a last look through the glass window, McKay left the control room, heading down the stairs to join the rest of the mission.

 

* * *

 

“OKAY, LET’S GO PEOPLE,” Sumner bellowed, all too close to him, and John fought the urge to drop his cargo and clap his hands over his ears. The clawing fear of following the colonel through a wormhole to another galaxy chewed its way up his spine and curled around his heart. The colonel knew he was a berserker, that berserkers are too sensitive to loud noises with their heightened hearing, that something bad can knock him into an absence seizure. Was the colonel trying to make him look bad? Trying to trigger a seizure? How was John supposed to trust Sumner as his CO at this rate? Right; in theory, he didn’t have to. He was attached to the science division for some gene he has: a lab rat playing light switch for ancient technology.

“We don't know how much power we've got. Security teams One and Two, you're up first. All other personnel will follow on our signal.” Still too loud, so loud. “Once on the other side, keep moving, clear the debarkation area. On my lead…”

“Hold up, Colonel!” Dr. Weir was shouting, yes, but her voice was pitched just loud enough to cover the gateroom, and it made him shiver for a moment in gratitude. “I’m on your six for this one, Marshall.”

Sumner glared at Dr. Weir with a stony military facade that John knew all too well. John didn’t think he could feel much worse about this, but his military commander didn’t respect the leader of this mission. If they encountered any hostiles out there, Dr. Weir could lose her position to martial law. If he could back out, if her offer truly applied to him--

“You ready for this?” The warm drawl at his right elbow belonged to Ronald Greer. Greer managed to hold onto his easy smile in this sensory hell, managed to still sound calm. A shifting of air and a nudge on his left elbow made John aware of the third berserker being sent on this mission, Anthony Markham.

“A new galaxy, and we’re just walkin’ straight in. Wonders never cease.” Markham never quite sounded warm, but his heartbeat was steady.

John answered both of them with a sharp nod, then followed them up the ramp to stand before the rippling pool of blue that looked like water.

 

* * *

 

Walter watched with pride as the men of Sec-1 and Sec-2 readied their weapons in an efficient and professional manner. Some of them were new to the program, and some of them were recognisable SGC vets, and each and every one of them was going out there to do Earth proud.

“Jack, it’s not too late for me --” Doctor Daniel Jackson sounded hopeful, wistful.

“No.” General Jack O'Neill was warm, but firm in his rejection.

There was a pleading edge to his voice when Jackson asked again. “I can just grab my --”

“No.” The answer was warm again, and Walter could hear the smile in O’Neill’s voice.

“ -- kit.” Jackson sounded so dejected, and on his shoulder, his falcon daemon gave a low sorrowful cry, her eyes fixed through the open wormhole with a thousand yard stare.

The radio crackled to life with Col. Sumner's voice. “All clear. Send them through.”

 

* * *

 

John followed the other berserkers up the end of the ramp to the standing puddle the colonel and Dr. Weir had walked through moments before, where a young man was standing. The rank insignias at his neck marked him as a lieutenant.  

“Ever been through the gate before?” the lieutenant, a kid really, asked in a conversational tone. Ford, John read off his uniform as Lt. Ford turned and waited with his back mere inches from the puddle, his eyes up on the control room over John’s shoulder.

“No,” John answered. The kid had smiled at him, maybe he could get away with asking -- “What’s it feel like?”

The kid looked him over, his eyes flicking over John’s uniform neck, where his rank was absent and his ID necklace was plainly visible. The chocolate lab at the lieutenant’s feet was sitting, her tail thumping furiously while she stared into the blue of the wormhole.

“Expedition team, move out!” The command spat out of the radios and echoed throughout the room, starting a rustling wave of movement.

“Hurts like hell,” the kid said in a dead serious tone, before his heart rate spiked, and his face split into a grin. As he jumped backward through the gate, his daemon sprang into a leap beside him. Their combined celebratory shrieks echoed for a moment through the gateroom while John stood stock still frozen in shock.

The kid-- Ford. Ford had just joked with him freely.

Then he was moving up the ramp at the head of a wild and unruly mob of soldiers, civilians, boxes, MALPs, FREDs, cargo containers, and daemons of every form imaginable. Greer and Markham were on his 2 and 10, and the three of them advanced through the gate in a tight formation.

 

* * *

 

Amanna let out a long mournful coo in Daniel’s ear as they watched the expedition embark for Atlantis. He hadn’t been lying to Jack, he had a pack ready to go. He’d been working overtime to scan his personal collection of reference texts so he could take digital copies with him, if he had only been allowed to go.

_*We should be down there. We could learn so much in Atlantis,*_ Amanna lamented to him, and he felt her center of gravity shift as she leaned to an angle she could watch the MALP visual display. On screen the flashlights bobbing revealed a city awash in color. It was nothing like the cool uniform grey walls of the SGC. _*We belong there. I just know it.*_

He trusted the things she just knew. It was part of being the daemon to an empath. In the year on Abydos he had gotten quite practiced at shielding, keeping his gifts hidden, as was polite among the Abydan people. Ra had a tendency to smite the gifted. They may have believed Ra dead, but social customs are slow to change.

Here on Earth, it was a matter of survival to hide his gifts, and it had been for years. He didn’t want to lose the easy camaraderie he had with the personnel here on base. If they knew, they would fear what he was. He had seen it happen to every empath who was stationed here. They all requested transfers out. People like to keep their secrets, all the more precious to them when under stress or fearing for their lives.

_*We’ll get there someday. One way or another Amanna, I’ll get us to Atlantis.*_


	3. A City Asleep

In the clamor of the gateroom of the SGC, Elizabeth hadn’t been prepared for the place on the other side of the gate to be quiet. There was a stillness to the place, but it was a peaceful, ready stillness. In the mountain, when the gateroom had been empty, and she had left her office to stand in the briefing room and stare down at the gate, the stillness had felt insurmountable.

 

Here the chamber had a tranquil silence, a sense to it that it was waiting to live again. Like the quiet hours of a spring dawn. The stairs were shallow enough to be easy, even for small legs. Could the city have been designed for children to roam even here in the gateroom? 

 

They were in some sort of tower, wrapped in windows of decorative stained glass. The whole room had a sense of style and beauty to it. The designer had to have been a true artist to have layered the rooms together as they did.

 

Kinden pumped his wings and circled the ceiling of the great space. Objectively, it was barely bigger than the gateroom on earth, but it felt open and inviting in a way that was completely alien in comparison. 

 

The opportunities here, to learn about the Gatebuilders -- this was the opportunity of a lifetime.

 

* * *

 

John stepped into the alien city and took a breath to catalog his surroundings. There were faint tangs of nervous sweat and gunpowder in the air but, nothing else. The air was crisp and clear. There weren’t any pollutants or chemicals. It smelled  _ fresh _ .

 

The lights were turning on intermittently in no discernible pattern. John looked about the room, straining the limits of his considerable hearing. Audible were the clicking of canine daemon feet and the quiet tread of regulation field boots, but nothing one would expect to hear in a technology-filled control room. No electrical hum of high-volume wiring, no whine of generators. But there was something. He couldn’t hear it, it wasn’t a taste or a smell. There was something he was sensing here, something soft and sweet and gentle.   

 

Sec-1 began their reconnaissance through the door left of the gate, Greer sliding neatly into their group, and Markham peeled off to join Sec-2 as they searched out through the right-hand door.

  
  
  


John looked up to the balcony to see who’s heartbeat he could hear spiking irregularly. Dr. Weir was looking around with an expression of rapture. There was a wonder in her eyes and a tightly controlled smile on her face. If someone didn’t have inhuman hearing, they might have missed how her heart was racing. There were stress hormones pouring into the air now as the security teams spread out to explore, and people were pouring through the gate behind him, but as John climbed the stairs to the balcony behind her, he could smell the hormone cocktail he associated with people being excited and enthralled. 

 

It was a good sign that Weir was so in awe of the place. It had to say something good about her as a person, the way she was marveling like an art student at the Louvre. If she had been the only superior he had to worry about, he might not have  _ had _ anything to worry about. 

 

“Find an open place and park it until instructed otherwise,” Sumner barked to the room. John felt lighter than he could remember feeling in too long; Sumner had told him before that he wouldn’t be seeing field operations but now he could believe it. He wasn’t getting thrown onto the frontlines as fodder. He wasn’t being asked to do the impossible. Babysit the geeks, and play lightswitch with his gene. This might not be so bad. 

 

* * *

 

Ron led the team that he was with down the hall, listening for any sounds in the hauntingly empty city complex. There was a sound, he couldn’t identify, a muted refrain akin to a whalesong teasing at the edge of his hearing.  

 

The city was lighting up around them, and Ron had to sort so many human noises from the expedition to try and listen for anything environmental in the stillness of the city. Their safety was on his shoulders, and it was a familiar weight. This was his job at its most basic, being alert to the environment to keep his team alive; but this was also different. 

 

Atlantis - if this really was Atlantis - was beautiful. The hallways seemed to have been laid out to leave little nooks and crannies where someone could stop and rest, or curl up with a mug of tea and people-watch. Some of the rooms were partitioned off with stunning stained glass walls that filled the city with an airiness that lifted the ambiance of the empty city. 

 

Ron had been in cities that had been abandoned and cleared warehouses that had been sealed against the elements. This place was so different, not just in the way that rooms were asymmetric unlike anything he’d seen in Earth architecture, but in the omnipresent use of a dozen different hues of light blue. Someone had designed the place with an eye for color that left the impression that the ocean had been captured and laid into the walls, with the fiery colors of sunrise and sunset trapped in the panels of the windows. 

 

If there were plants lining some of the halls, and fountains in small gardens at some of these atriums, this place would be a tranquil paradise. 

 

The team rounded a corner, and Ron could feel the not-quite-whalesong pressing against his skin. He signaled the team to hold up and advanced along the hallway on his own. Ron turned the bend in the hallway and froze. 

 

The window ahead of him framed a striking view of the ocean floor. There were distant rocky outcroppings beyond the edge of the city, and oh, the  _ city _ ! The spires and towers of Atlantis stretched out far enough that Ron could tell that it was far too large for them to clear in an afternoon with a full battalion, let alone the two teams they currently had working to establish a secure zone. 

 

“Clear,” Ron called back to his team.  _ Moonlight _ , he thought as the other men poured into the space lit only by the soft rays filtering through the depths.  _ We’re seeing another planet by moonlight. _

  
  


* * *

 

 

Elizabeth stood, watching the expedition,  _ her people _ , getting to work establishing themselves. The great room was awash in gentle light. As best as she could see, none of her people had touched anything yet, just busy carting off their supplies down the hallways off the sides of the room and clearing space for their redundant supplies that were now starting to pour through. The crates had just switched from the winged pegasus logos of the expedition essential gear to the generic SGC logo that was emblazoned across the backup supplies. Major Anne Teldy was coordinating the efforts of the scientists and military personnel to keep the supplies from piling up in the gateroom itself. The major had been their best expression of the ancient gene before they had found the berserker Shepperd, and Elizabeth was glad to have them both. 

 

“That’s everyone.” Marshall had a tendency to bark even the most neutral of statements, but he was the Pentagon’s top pick in the event that there was something nasty out here, and the Joint Chiefs had assured her that he was the best man to keep them all alive in the face of seemingly insurmountable danger. He had an impressive service record in some of the most violent theaters in the world. He would support her out here. She clicked on her radio as she dropped her pack.

 

“General O’Neill?” She took a moment to regain her excitement about where they were, and what they had found, in order to quash her fear. This was a victory, no matter how small, and it deserved a moment of celebration not tainted by borrowed dangers the future may or may not hold. “Atlantis Base -” and didn’t it just feel amazing to say that? “- offers you greetings from the Pegasus Galaxy. I know we are balancing the power readings on the ZPM against our backup supplies, but we are ready whenever you need to cut power to the gate.”

 

The supplies kept pouring through, and Elizabeth leaned on the railing between what appeared to be a control room and a small office. Kinden landed next to her and pressed his downy shoulder against hers, his joy a glowing reflection of her own. 

 

* * *

 

Rodney was glad he wasn’t in the room with whoever was so despondent anymore. With all the Atlantis personnel through the gate, they must have left that person on Earth. Might it have been Daniel? They did leave the only person who had actually ascended behind in another galaxy. And to think, O’Neill had accused him of being selfish for wanting the best translator of Ancient text to come on the mission. 

 

Maybe he shouldn’t have phrased it like he wanted a human Rosetta Stone when he asked to bring Daniel along. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the irregular updates!
> 
> I love this story, and would love to hear from you! Are there elements you are enjoying? What do you think will happen next?
> 
> No seriously guys, your comments give me life <3


	4. Tidal Forces

John stood in the center of the chamber with all the consoles and focused on not touching anything. The scientist who was fussing over them, McKay, had laid into an airman for walking too close to him in the cafeteria with the wrong tray of food last week, and he’d seen the way the empath fussed over his computer. Not worth risking touching the consoles and rousing the feisty scientist’s ire.

Across the chamber, there was a gentle hiss, and a low melodic hum as the doors to a room opened. The room was large enough that the muttered gasps of wonder from the exploring soldiers echoed and wove together in the space.

Through the hallways, there was a faint echo as an open radio connection picked up a pair of scientists.

“They look like ships! Spaceships!” The first voice was giddy.

“I love it.” The second one was soft with wonder, trailing off in awe.

The line crackled as the radio was brought through the air and up to the mouth of the bearer. It was the first voice that spoke again.

“Dr. Weir, you have to see this.”

Dr. Weir straightened off the balcony railing, her owl lifting off with a powerful swoop of his wings.

“I have a lot of things to see. Just be careful.”

She joined them among the consoles, and gave him a significant look as the console he walked past lit up.

“I didn’t touch anything!” John set the bags he was carrying gently on the floor, and he lifted his hands away and held them out to his sides.

 

* * *

 

“Relax,” Elizabeth told the Air Force asset.  “It’s like the entire complex is sensing our presence and coming to life.” Dr. Weir made a placating gesture, low and one-handed. Her eyes raking over the consoles around the room, they were turning on intermittently, in no order, that she could discern.

“This has got to be the control room. This is obviously their version of a DHD.” Rodney moved off to another console, his hands flying in gestures and softly, reverently touching the consoles. “This area could be power distribution control system, possibly a computer interface --”

“Hey, hey,” Elizabeth gently interrupted him. “Why don’t you find out?” She was soft with her redirect, and she didn’t push it when Rodney threw a haphazard ‘right’ over his shoulder and started unpacking his kit, examining the crystals and unwinding cables.

Elizabeth watches as Rodney bustles around the room, setting up the interfaces that he had built at the outpost in Antarctica. Had the final call been hers, Carson  Beckett would just have been in charge of the medical aspects of the science department, not the chief of the whole science department and Colonel Sumner’s counterpart as her advisor. The IOA was uncomfortable with an empath being one of her primary advisors, and had she been asked to sign the clauses in expedition contract that he had signed? Elizabeth would have given staying on earth a lot more thought. There were clauses in the contract restricting his ability to be alone with anyone of authority in the city!

Anyone who has spent five minutes with the man knows that he would rather bury himself in a computer than have any kind of influence over anyone else's life. He would rather pursue his science in a vacuum free of politics. Rodney is brusk, straightforward, and remarkably abrasive for an empath, and after a lifetime of dealing with political animals wrestling to play king, Rodney is a relief.

Carson was an adequate choice, but he was a private sector research doctor brought in from a pharmaceutical company that had been read into the program to work on refining tretinoin for the free Jaffa. Carson had the background to run a research lab, and the experience in both private practice and the drug trials to be a qualified pick for the expedition. Still, Elizabeth would have liked someone with less political acumen heading the science division.

“Elizabeth, you should come look at this.” Speaking of Carson, it was his voice that interrupted her contemplation.

“On my way.” Elizabeth said, and powered up her tablet, following the location tagging system that Rodney had rigged up for the radios. Colonel Sumner had been worried about being able to find people in crisis, and Elizabeth was already seeing the merit of the system.

 

* * *

 

Rodney ignored the chatter on the radio in his ear. It was tuned to the general science channel, and that was all Beckett’s problem. Right now, Rodney just had to get his computers interfaced with the ancient systems and figure out what kind of power situation they were looking at.

Rodney let himself get lost in the rhythm of his work, establishing connections, assigning terminals to readout raw data from the system --. Oh no. No. This was very bad. Rodney reached up and activated his mic. He schooled himself to a nearly calm tone before he spoke.

“Doctor Beckett, I need to see you in the control room immediately.” Rodney was proud of how not-totally-fucking-screwed he managed to sound on the open channel.

“Rodney, I have a lot of people telling me they need me urgently, I’m sure you can handle it.” Beckett sounded distracted, and Rodney couldn’t blame him. He certainly didn’t envy him the lightning rod for chaos and strife that came with the position of department head.

Rodney took the skeletal permission and ran with it, sinking into the systems and working frantically to stem the hemorrhaging power that was soon going to starve the shield of energy and collapse the ocean in on the lot of them.

 

* * *

 

Elizabeth was listening raptly as the recording began again. The woman was in the middle of a sentence when the power for the chamber cut out. Her radio started crackling with reports of power outages from different teams who were scattered over the rooms in the nearby levels of the tower. Next to her, Beckett reached up and activated his radio.

“Doctor McKay, are you still in the control room?”

“Yes, yes but I’m busy, whatever it is I’m sure that someone else can handle it.” Rodney snapped the words out, his voice sounding distracted and distant.

Carson sighed and locked eyes with Elizabeth, shrugging minutely. “Rodney, you are in the control room, you are the one best placed to investigate the blackouts that we seem to experiencing.”

“Oh, yeah, well, I suppose a few brownouts might be annoying to the exploration efforts, but I figure it was better to sit in the dark than to try and grow gills, so I am going to keep doing what I can to handle the problem.” Elizabeth fought to hide a smile from Carson while Rodney continued. “After all, you did tell me to just handle it; and in this case, ‘it’ is the failing shield that is starving for the power to keep holding back the ocean.”

Elizabeth took off at a jog for the control room, Beckett scant paces behind her. She reached the landing for the control room access level at the same time as Colonel Sumner reached them, ascending from lower in the tower.

“Rodney!” Elizabeth mentally winced as she heard the sharp edge in her voice, but she didn’t have time to apologize, just soften her tone and continue from here. “Rodney, what’s going on?”

“To put it bluntly, the shield that is holding back the ocean is running out of power, and our teams running around activating systems is just hastening our already imminent demise.” Rodney didn’t even look up from the laptops he was working on, switching back and forth rapidly between the two screens as he typed with precise and clipped spatters of keystrokes.

A string of Czech-accented french rolled over the radio, Rodney reached up and activated his, responding in a flurry of French that was dizzyingly technical and interspersed with a heavy smattering of English loan words.

“Zelenka is being actually helpful and interfacing one of our naquadah generators to try and buy us some time.”

“We need to evacuate.” Colonel Sumner chimed in. “All teams, fall back to the main level, of the gateroom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the plot thickens ... What do you guys think of how the Berserkers and Empaths are affecting the politics of the mission?
> 
> Do you like my background of Beckett's involvement?


	5. Interlude

 

_Atlantis can feel the bright ones within her again. For so long she has been alone, with only the memory song of the great fish for company, but now - she is not alone now._

_Some of these humans carry the echoing blood of her builders, of the Alterans who gave her halls and chambers and a stardrive._

_Others carry the ancestry of the Furlings who birthed her, of the beings who wove her code and her very being, who created the heart of who she is._

_But_ these _humans cannot hear her._

 

* * *

“Dr. Weir, you have to see this.”  

“I have a lot of things to see. Just be careful.”

* * *

 

_She screams a warning to them as they set foot in her welcoming hall, but they press on._

_She cries to them of the failing power, begging them to stop, to save themselves. They do not heed her._

_She doesn't have the power to keep them safe from the ocean, but she will try._

 

* * *

“I didn’t touch anything.”  

“It’s like the entire complex is sensing our presence and coming to life.”

* * *

 

_Atlantis is depleted after these long centuries and she knows they don't have Potentia; she would feel a source if they carried one._

_She pulls her precious little power in close, trying to defend the sectors her new people are inhabiting -_ __but it slips, and swirls away._ _

 

_The lights flicker in the central tower and she drains the energy from the southeast pier entirely, lets the shielding drop to buy her new people a few more minutes._

 

* * *

“Rodney, what’s going on?”  

“To put it bluntly, the shield that is holding back the ocean is running out of power.”

* * *

 

_So many of her sisters have fallen from the stars. She hasn't heard another city’s voice --_

_There! One of the Bright Ones, his mind flashing with numbers and systems, is looking to dial the gate -_

 

* * *

“Can you just pick an address at random?”

“McKay, pick one and send a MALP already.”

* * *

 

_Atlantis presses an address to the top of the list. It was the last of her sister cities that she heard singing among the stars: Athea and her children._

 

* * *

“Colonel, you have a go, providing the planet has viable life support potential,”

* * *

 

_Atlantis listens as the gate engages. Athea is silent, but there are whispers, the minds of Bright Ones._

_One of her Bright Ones connects a reactor, and Atlantis sets her hibernation protocols, she will give her new children every extra minute she can buy them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been three months of trying to get unstuck. 
> 
> It has been several years of not having this one transition anywhere NEAR put together. 
> 
> I did it, finally. So, here my luvlies, and I hope and pray you like this?
> 
> Next chapter is written in its entirety, and I just have to go over it with my editor.


	6. Short Nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments, they really perk me up while I am slogging through the tedium of edits, and being dyslexic makes editing a miserable experience. Thank you again <3

The team walked through the dark forest, their night vision goggles over their eyes. Ron lifted his, and smirked. Alien territory, but low light is enough for a Berserker. His own senses would be sufficient for recon in assessing the suitability of the area as an evac site, yet they still handed him a pair of night vision goggles.

There was a skittering of footsteps nearby, Ron signaled a halt and drew a deep breath. He heard the low swoosh of a P-90 sweeping through the air, even as he saw two boys running through the trees, one chasing the other. They smelled human, and happy, the air laced with faint traces of adrenaline and endorphins under the damp musk of wet earth, moss, and underbrush.

A faint peal of laughter reached his ears as it twined with an affected, childish growl.

“Juveniles. They are human kids.” Ronald said loudly enough to be heard by the entire team. He caught the flicker of the team lifting their fingers off the triggers of their weapons, lowering the firearms only when they too saw the kids. 

The first kid tore off his mask, staring at their party and standing stock still, the white wispy hair on the mask waving in the slight breeze. 

The second kid looked them over, curiosity and excitement were written across his face as he stepped in front of his friend.

“Are you from the ring?” The excitement in the kid’s voice matched his spiking heart rate, pheromones filling the air with waves of excitement and joy. The kid smelled like meeting strangers was as good as a birthday. 

“Why yes, we are.” Colonel Sumner spoke absently, and he wasn’t looking at the kid. His focus was on the treeline, his shoulders back, his gun hanging from its strap on the front of his tac-vest. “Now would you mind taking us --”

Ron lost the conversation as he refocused his training to the footsteps rustling through the underbrush in the woods. Bipedal gait, sounds human. Adult size, upwards of 250 pounds and moving fast, if experience was anything to go by.

“Jinto? Jinto?” The voice ringing out was a medium-high tenor and reedy with stress. The man’s lungs were rasping from his headlong sprint as he came in sight. He was tall and cut a hulking figure, but Ron could see where much of the man’s bulk shifted, and the overlayer had the texture of furs as it moved in the sparse moonlight. 

Out of breath, the stranger pulled up short, outside of where he should be able to see them, then spread his hands wide to his sides, revealing his palms. A moment later Ronald Greer felt it, the wave of soothing calm a trained empath could produce to indicate that they meant no harm. A shape rose out of the shadows behind him; his daemon was a plump bird the size of a goose. The birds head bobbed at the end of a long neck as it flew, and a glorious fan of a tail ruffled with what may have been curiosity as it dug clawed feet into the man's shoulder and landed. It cooed just loudly enough to be heard across the slowly closing distance between them, a genteel and mournful sound. 

The man swept forward at an easy, loping gait. There were hints of sapphire blue and emerald green in the long feathers of his daemon, chevrons on the flight feathers, and eye-of-the-gods in the plume rising from its head. 

“I am Halling,” the man said, stopping a good thirty feet away from the group.

Ron could feel the wavering of the emotional projection, could feel the man fight to remain calm. They must look quite the sight, a force bristling with weapons, and strange masks, approaching in the dead of night, unannounced.  

“Papa!” The curious boy exclaimed, jerking into motion and careening towards the man. When the boy impacted his father in a reckless hug. The man reached over, pulling him back far enough that Halling could kneel, and look his son sternly in the eye. 

“What have I told you about playing in the forest after dark?”

“Not to. I’m sorry Papa.” The boy ducked his head and buried his face in his father's neck. The man wrapped one long arm around the boy’s shoulders and buried the other hand in his son’s hair. 

“I worry.” Halling kissed the side of his son’s head before releasing the boy and standing to face the group once more. 

“Papa, they are from the Ring.” The reverence in the boy’s voice was plain. 

“Sir?” Ron asked pointedly. 

Sumner looked the man over, and Ron caught the click in Sumner’s eyes as he dismissed the man as a ‘native’. When Sumner spoke, it was in the voice he used for anyone who didn’t outrank him. 

“We are peaceful explorers, and we would like to establish trade relations with your good people.” Ron fought against the flicker of unease in his gut as he heard the barely concealed insincerity in the colonel’s voice. If he could hear it as a berserker, and if the alien man was an empath as he suspected, what kind of emotional read would he be getting off the colonel and the other soldiers?

Halling took in the group with another sweeping glance, before he settled on Markham, in the back of their group on rearguard. “Teyla will wish to meet with you.” Halling turned and walked away, letting the words hang behind him in the darkness. 

Ron listened to Sumner deploying men to watch the gate. When Parker and Smitty walked off, he saw the bouncy Lt. with the blue-eyed chocolate lab walking up to the colonel. 

“Sir, if you don’t mind my asking … I noticed you’ve got a problem with Major Sheppard.” People tended to forget how the enhanced senses of a Berserker worked. They may be several hundred feet back of him but Ron could still hear every word exchanged between the pair. It was one of the reasons that Berserkers were confined to barracks when they weren’t in use. People liked their privacy too much to be comfortable with super hearing.  

“My problem, Lieutenant, is with his record. I don’t like anybody who doesn't follow the proper chain of command.” Sumner’s voice held a ringing note of condemnation, and Ron swallowed hard. John was in for a long tenure under their commanding officer. The expedition might never make it to earth, and if Sumner was so candidly condemning John, would the Colonel ever send the John into the field? Would John ever be allowed out of the labs? Would John --

“What was that mask you had on?” Ron’s attention was yanked back into his immediate surroundings by the kid at his elbow. Jinto was looking up at him with an open honest curiosity that seemed genuine. The kid was beaming at him, and his daemon was balanced on his shoulder, the narrow eyes fixed on Ron.

“Manners Jinto.” Halling hissed, and the boy just rolled his eyes at the admonishment. 

“I am Jinto, this is Wex.” The kid babbled the late introduction, and Ron felt his stomach tighten as the father looked him straight in the eye, relaxed, easy, and unafraid. “So what’s the mask?” Jinto whined out the words, bouncing with excitement. 

“It helps you see in the dark. Check it out.” Ron offered the kid his infrared goggles since his Berserker eyesight rendered them useless anyway.  Jinto had a little creature that looked like an ermine riding on his shoulder, and his friend had a flying shadow that fluttered in his wake as they walked, broad-winged with a long neck and tail, it appeared to be a type of winged snake of some sort.

The kids seemed to latch onto and trust Ron instantly. They were leery of Sumner’s German Shepherd, and even though Aiden’s chocolate lab was as sweet as the Lieutenant was himself, they stayed away from her too. Ron was used to being avoided in a group, as though he would chase others daemons away as surely as he had lost his own.

“Woah!” Jinto held the goggles to his eyes and gasped. 

A small fluttering creature latched onto the other child, Wex, as he reached for the infrared goggles. It was scaled with a fine nose and delicate legs not dissimilar to a gecko, while its head resembled a small garter snake or a viper. The wings were expansive and webbed like a bats, but had joints at the shoulders thatweres not dissimilar to the shoulder structure of a hummingbird. “Let me see.” Wex looked through the glasses, spinning to see as much as possible. “Can I have ‘em?”

“No, but you can use them until we get back to the village. Now, how about you tell me about that mask you were wearing.” Greer gestured to the stringy-haired mask with the pitted, gnarled face.

“This?” Wex said, gesturing with the mask. “Wraith.” Wex said dismissively before spinning in a circle to watch something pass overhead amongst the trees through the lenses of the night vision goggles. 

“Wraith? What’s that?” 

Wex turned and stared, his daemon fluttering free and circling his head, making a low, distressed noise. “You don’t know?”

Jinto stared, shocked, his feet grinding to a halt on the path before he scrambled to catch up. “What world do you come from?”

“Can we go there?” Wex said, grabbing on to Ron’s arm. Ron stared for a second, the causal nature of the gesture wholly alien.

Ron felt a pang of homesickness. “I’m afraid not. I come from a galaxy far, far away.”

They arrived on the outskirts of a small village of tents and lean-to structures, the grass still growing raggedly in the paths, the dirt smelling of roots and upturned soil. The village was new, likely temporary. 

The tents were mostly leather and hides, the villagers that were awake and moving between the structures were dressed in furs over their cotton or silk shirts.    
  



End file.
